Progress and Potential: A focus on sourcing practices from a factory perspective

This thematic brief is based on the independent assessment carried by Tufts University on the Better Work Programme

Launched in 2007, the Better Work Programme – a joint initiative of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group – has made significant progress in improving working conditions and promoting competitiveness in global garment supply chains. Participating in Better Work has enabled factories to steadily raise compliance with ILO core labour standards and national legislation.
In 2016 Tufts University published an independent impact assessment of the programme since its inception. The university’s interdisciplinary research team has gathered and analysed nearly 15,000 survey responses from garment workers and 2,000 responses from factory managers in Haiti, Indonesia, Jordan, Nicaragua and Vietnam. Tufts’ in-depth analysis of the surveys provides concrete evidence of Better Work’s effectiveness in changing workers’ lives and boosting factory competitiveness.

In this brief, we present the evidence from the Better Work impact assessment that characterizes how supply chain dynamics in the global garment industry impact working conditions. The data provide new perspectives on these dynamics – those of garment factory managers and workers. The analysis establishes an empirical link between the sourcing practices of firms and the conditions that managers and workers experience at the factories.